Harry Spalding, a captain in the Royal
Grenadiers, inherits a cottage in a small Cornish village after his
brother Charles dies in mysterious circumstances. He moves into the
cottage with his wife Valerie. Harry discovers that several locals have
been killed by mysterious snake bites. This is also found to have been
the cause of Charles’s death. The origin of the snake killings appears
to rest with Dr Franklyn who lives in the village mansion. As Harry
investigates, he discovers that these are being caused by Franklyn’s
daughter Anna who was abducted by a snake cult that Franklyn was
researching in Borneo and that she now periodically transforms into a
snake creature.

It is 1917 and Jane Hudson is an
enormously popular variety show child star. She is able to get anything
she wants and throws tantrums when she does not get it. She is envied by
her sister Blanche who vows to one day get even. Blanche’s opportunity
comes in the 1930s when she becomes a Hollywood star and Jane is a
has-been who has sunken into alcoholism. As the two sisters drive back
from a party one night, one gets out to open the gate and the other
slips the car into gear and drives forward at them. The accident leaves
Blanche paralysed from the waist down. Thirty years later, Jane is left
tending the wheelchair-ridden Blanche. However, Jane’s sanity has
snapped and she cruelly tortures the helpless Blanche, keeping her
imprisoned and feeding dead rats and her pet bird up to her.

COMMENTARY:

With the exception of Psycho (1960) and to a lesser extent Les Diaboliques (1955), What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
is the film that had the greatest influence on the prolific
psycho-thriller genre of the 1960s. It gave an entirely new impetus to
the flagging careers of Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, both former
Hollywood stars beyond their glory years who subsequently found new
careers in horror movies. Indeed, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?,
with its sight of former Hollywood stars over the hill and going round
the bend, created a lurid pseudo-tabloid sub-genre of Grand Guignol
Hollywood self-devouring (one that had its antecedent in Gloria
Swanson’s swan song, Sunset Boulevard (1950), which was almost a horror film). What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? was followed by a cycle of Grand Guignol psycho films featuring over-the-hill female stars – Olivia De Havilland appeared in Lady in a Cage (1964), Tallulah Bankhead in The Fanatic/Die, Die My Darling (1965), Eleanor Parker in Eye of the Cat (1969), Shelley Winters in What’s the Matter with Helen? (1971) and Who Slew Auntie Roo? (1971), Ruth Roman in The Baby (1972), Lana Turner in Persecution (1974), while both Bette Davis and Joan Crawford appeared in several lookalike films – Davis in Hammer’s The Nanny (1965) and The Anniversary (1968), and Crawford in Strait-Jacket (1964), I Saw What You Did (1965) and Berserk (1968). Indeed, Joan Crawford’s own life story was even turned into a Batty Old Dames film of sorts with Mommie Dearest (1981).

When What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
came out, a large part of its success was the shock of seeing the two
former stars reduced to monsters. The horror in the film fails to
translate so well to today’s teen and twentysomething audiences who
often find the film dated and ludicrous because they are not conversant
with the film’s context – that it represented a shock trashing of two of
the icons of Hollywood glamour in the 1940s. Bette Davis in particular
shocked everybody with her completely over-the-top performance. It is a
real theatre-rattling barnstormer of a delivery that she gives – and one
that garnered her a Best Actress Academy Award nomination. She goes
totally bonkers and the results are fascinatingly grotesque to watch.
The scene where she in cracked, gargoyle makeup sings a song I’ve Written a Letter to Daddy in a cracked, girl-like voice is a masterpiece of the memorably bizarre and twisted.

Joan Crawford’s fine performance was not
unexpectedly overshadowed by Bette Davis but is one that elicits a good
deal of pained sympathy. Although such is something that the film seems
to misunderstand. The final twist in the ending mutes the horror –
seeming to imply that we should forgive Jane for what she has done as
Blanche deserved it. A good deal of the venom between the characters was
apparently something that existed between the two actresses in
real-life with both delighting in spitefully nasty games of
one-upmanship on the other on set – there was even a book written about
such Bette and Joan: The Divine Feud
(1989) by Shaun Considine. The irony that only came out in later years
is that the roles were uncommonly close to the truth upon the parts of
both actresses – Joan Crawford and Bette Davis were both utterly vain,
particularly when it came to their own celebrity, both abused their own
family members and both had daughters who wrote books about the cruelty
of their parents.

Director Robert Aldrich has the power to
shock at his disposal – the dead rat scene always has gross-out impact.
There are the odd moments of suspense – the move down the stairs and the
balled-up note – although there are also times when the film seems
talky, almost too stagy, and needs more drive and tension. Indeed, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
is a film whose effect lies with the barnstorming theatrics of its two
stars rather than as a straight psycho-thriller. (It would make a very
interesting revival as a stage play). There is fine black-and-white
photography, which only serves to bring out the deliberately unglamorous
making-up of its two stars. The other Academy Award nominee among the
cast was Victor Buono as Supporting Actor – there is a sly amusement to
the scenes with his mother and a piquant charm to his clumsy English
mannerdness in the scenes with an outrageously flirting Bette Davis. In
recent years, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? has gained the status of a gay cult classic because of its campy over-acting.

The film was later blandly remade as a tv movie What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
(1991), which was executive produced by Robert Aldrich’s son William.
In a piece of freakish stunt casting, the Joan Crawford and Bette Davis
roles were played respectively by real-life sisters Vanessa and Lynn
Redgrave.

Robert Aldrich later returned with Bette
Davis (and it was originally intended Joan Crawford who quit/was fired
in mid-production because of the rivalry with Davis) in a follow-up of
sorts Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), which is a much better film, if not as famous. Also of interest is Robert Aldrich’s The Killing of Sister George (1968), which returns to the same Hollywood Grand Guignol as What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? although is not a horror film, and his The Legend of Lylah Clare
(1969), where a producer attempts to turn Kim Novak into a replica of
his dead wife, which hovers for a time on the edge of being a ghost
story. In the Hollywood Guignol stakes, Aldrich also produced a further
Batty Old Dames psycho film What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? (1969) and Bert I. Gordon’s Picture Mommy Dead
(1966) where the spirit of Zsa Zsa Gabor haunts her daughter from out
of a painting. Robert Aldrich had a celebrated career that stretched
between the 1950s and 1980s, making films such as The Dirty Dozen (1967), The Longest Yard (1974) and The Choirboys (1977). He made several other films of genre interest, including the quasi-sf Mickey Spillane adaptation Kiss Me Deadly (1955), which is perhaps one of the finest of all Hollywood film noirs, and the nuclear missile silo hijacking thriller Twilight’s Last Gleaming (1977).

Novelist Henry Farrell, whose 1960 novel the film was based on, also developed a film career as a result of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?. Farrell furnished the script for Robert Aldrich’s Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte, the novel for the Curtis Harrington-directed Baby Jane copy How Awful About Allan (1970) and the script for Harrington’s What’s the Matter with Helen? (1971), as well as scripts for two tv movies, the haunted house drama The House That Would Not Die (1970) and the clairvoyance thriller The Eyes of Charles Sand (1972).

In 1921, the brilliant, highly acclaimed
German film director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau seeks to make the
greatest and most realistic vampire film of all time. He calls his film
‘Nosferatu’ after Bram Stoker’s widow refuses him permission to film
‘Dracula’. He takes his crew to the small town of Wismar. In the role of
the vampire, Murnau employs an actor called Max Schreck who is so much
of a character actor that he even appears in his own makeup. The
unnerved crew soon discover that Schreck is a real vampire and that
Murnau has promised him leading lady Greta Schroeder to feed upon at the
end of shooting.

COMMENTARY:

Shadow of the Vampire was announced immediately after the critical success of Gods and Monsters (1998), which was based on the life of the real-life genre director James Whale. Indeed, the initial pitch for Shadow of the Vampire had it sounding like it was a similar biopic of silent German director F.W. Murnau. Gods and Monsters was an honest attempt to speculate about true events surrounding Whale’s death. On the other hand, Shadow of the Vampire takes reality as a springboard for a What If story – in this case, what if F.W. Murnau shot Nosferatu (1922) using a real vampire?

The important difference between the two is to realize that Shadow of the Vampire
is a work of fiction, not of historical accuracy, even though it mimics
such. Max Schreck, although the character has attained a certain creepy
mythology, was a real flesh and blood actor and did not die in 1921 as
is stated here but went on to make some twenty other films over the next
decade up until his death in Munich in 1936 of a much more mundane
heart-attack. Nor were screenwriter Henrik Galeen and cinematographer
Fritz Arno Wagner killed as depicted in the film – Henrik Galeen went
onto write other fantastic classics such as Waxworks (1924), became a director with the remakes of The Student of Prague (1926) and Alraune
(1928) and died in 1949 after emigrating to the US to flee the Nazis,
while Fritz Arno Wagner filmed more than 100 films including such Fritz
Lang classics as Spies (1928), M (1931), The Testament of Dr Mabuse (1933) and did not die until 1958.

There are a few other inaccuracies – the
film makes the claim that F.W. Murnau wanted to make the “most realistic
vampire film of all time” – but as there had been no other vampire
films made before Nosferatu, it seems difficult to make such a qualitative statement. Shadow of the Vampire
also calls F.W. Murnau the greatest filmmaker of the German silent era
(which is probably true) but most of Murnau’s reputation came as a
result of Nosferatu and with later films such as The Last Laugh (1924), Faust (1926) and particularly Sunrise
(1927). The film’s characterization of Murnau as a reckless tyrant
obsessed with his art to the extent he is prepared to sacrifice human
life also verges on the libellous. However, as long as one can get the
proper perspective, one can enjoy Shadow of the Vampire for exactly what it is – a work of historical fiction, not of accuracy.

As such, Shadow of the Vampire
is rather enjoyable. The sense of verisimilitude achieved is strikingly
well done. Most impressive is the haunting and beautiful credits
sequence all in a stylised three-dimensional recreation of 1920s art
deco frescoes. Director E. Elias Merhige’s recreations of the camera
set-ups of the original Nosferatu are striking in their exacting precision. There is almost a sense of watching the original Nosferatu
and being able to stop the film you have just seen and walk around the
edges of the frame to watch the filmmakers at work. Merhige is only too
aware of the effect of this and starts to play into and against audience
expectations – when it comes to the scene where Orlock picks up the
locket with the photo of Johannes’s wife and Willem Dafoe playing Orlock
picks it up and looks at the photo of Greta Schroeder who has been
promised to him by Murnau, the expected line “What a beautiful throat”
rather wittily comes out as “What a beautiful bosom.” The classic death
scene with Ellen luring Orlock to her bed and keeping him until dawn is
revealed in reality as being conducted by an actress who is too
drug-addled to be able to wield the stake through the heart that was
originally intended to be Orlock’s form of dispatch, while the film’s
wonderfully cinematic death scene where Orlock is killed by the dawn’s
rays is revealed as being Schreck’s death caused by the accidental
opening of the set doors.

Steven Katz’s script pays exceptional
attention to characters and E. Elias Merhige has an excellent cast on
hand. Even the smaller parts in the film are filled with excellent,
wonderfully nuanced characterizations – especially notable being Cary
Elwes’s fine performance as the handsome, gung ho cameraman. Of course,
the performance that had everyone talking and received a number of award
nominations (the Golden Globes and the LA Film Critics Awards) is
Willem Dafoe’s Max Schreck. It is a part where Willem Dafoe completely
submerges himself in the role and is totally unrecognisble on screen.
His performance has a creepy fascination, although is one that is very
different to Max Schreck’s. This is a vampire cast as a pathetic and
aged figure that has lost all former glory and lacks anything in the way
of classic vampire movie magnetism, evil or dark sexuality. It is a
performance considerably abetted by the extraordinary character
soliloquies that Steven Katz provides – most haunting of all being the
one where he tells how the saddest part of Dracula
(1897) is the scene where we see Dracula forced to act as his own
servant, a scene where we see the touching sense of an aristocrat (not
Dracula, but Schreck) having been reduced to squalor.

Director E. Elias Merhige had previously made the extremely weird art film Begotten
(1991) concerning a day in the life of God, who disembowels himself,
and Mother Earth. Subsequently, Merhige went onto make the serial killer
thriller Suspect Zero (2004). Screenwriter Steven Katz went onto write the ghost story Wind Chill (2007).

Friday, 22 March 2013

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Joe Ryan and his business partner Sam Slade, the owners of a fishing
trawler operating off the Irish coast are witness as a dinosaur emerges
from the ocean in the aftermath of a volcanic eruption. With their ship
damaged in the encounter, they are forced to set ashore on tiny Nara
Island. The orphan Sean attaches himself to them but they are afforded a
frosty welcome by the harbourmaster, the archaeologist McCartin, who
they find is wanting to keep a trove of sunken treasure he discovered in
the nearby deeps to himself. The dinosaur then emerges and rampages
across the island but Ryan and Slade are able to capture it. They set
sail back to England with the creature, which they nickname Gorgo. They
decline the offer of scientists who want to study the Gorgo and instead
accept the substantially better offer to exhibit it at Dorkin’s Circus
in Battersea Park. There the creature becomes a source of great public
fascination. The scientists then realise that the dinosaur is only an
infant. Its parent emerges from the ocean and heads to London,
destroying all in its path, in order to get its child back.

COMMENTARY:

Director Eugene Lourie is a name of some genre interest. Lourie spent
the bulk of his career as an art director and production designer, first
in France and then in the US. Lourie only took the director’s chair on
four occasions but each of these was a genre film. The first was The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
(1953), the Ray Harryhausen stop-motion animation vehicle about an
atomically revived dinosaur amok in New York City. This was enormously
influential in that it was the very first atomic monster film, something
that rapidly became one of the most predominant 1950s fads, and created
the great era of atomic monsters, revived dinosaurs and giant insects
amok. Lourie next went onto make The Colossus of New York
(1958) about a scientist who transplants his son’s brain into a robot
body. He was evidently in demand as a monster movie maker and was
brought to England to make one further stop-motion animated monster
movie with The Giant Behemoth/Behemoth the Sea Monster (1958), which was intended as a copy of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and is a weaker effort. With Gorgo,
his last film, Lourie again went to London to make a revived dinosaur
movie – although, unlike the other two, this is not an atomic monster
film.

Gorgo was made at the behest of the
King Brothers, two US producers who made a number of B Westerns in the
previous decade and would subsequently make Captain Sindbad
(1963). Lourie is also working with less resources in terms of effects
budget than he was on his other dinosaur two films – where they created
their dinosaurs via the time-consuming stop-motion animation process,
here he resorts to the good old man in a monster suit as has been
patented a few years earlier by Godzilla, King of the Monsters (1954). That said, Gorgo
emerges as the best of Eugene Lourie’s dinosaur films due to the fact
that it gives the rampaging monster story an entirely different spin and
a surprise twist of sympathy.

One of the other bonuses about Gorgo
is that it is the only of Eugene Lourie’s films to have been made in
colour. Lourie has gone to shoot on the Irish coast and this makes a
visually impressive piece of location photography. The characters are
drawn somewhat better than usual in these films. Lourie creates some
good set-pieces – Bill Travers’ descent by bathysphere and encountering
the Gorgo in the depths; or the scene where the Gorgo is initially taken
to London and manages to get free as they transfer it to the carnival.
In the middle of the film, Lourie also does a fine job of integrating
what is clearly footage of the British Navy on manoeuvres – it is
certainly blended with opticals and original footage better than it is
in a comparable film like Invaders from Mars (1953).

When the invasion of London comes during the film’s last quarter, Lourie
pulls off his best effects set-pieces – the demolition of the Tower
Bridge; the mother Gorgo standing towering over Big Ben backlit by
orange smoke, demolishing the clock as the military fire missiles at
her. There is an enormous sense of convincing panic created as the
monster starts trampling the crowds and people are forced to take refuge
in the subway. Even though the effects are down around the level of the
average late 1950s Godzilla film, you tend to forget it is a man in a
monster suit and be impressed by the sheer spectacle on display. What we
end up with is a superior monster movie.

The plot for the first half of Gorgo has been borrowed from King Kong
(1933) – the monster that is captured and taken to be exhibited in the
city, whereupon it proceeds to escape and go amok. The touch that makes
the film stand out is the revelation in the last third that the dinosaur
they have captured is only an infant and that the mother has arrived to
get her child back and is very angry. This gives an extra level of
poignancy to the film – the final image the film goes out on with the
mother and child by her side walking into The Thames as London burns
around them is a beautiful one. It makes the antagonistic force of the
film something strikingly different as opposed to a rampaging monster
that only needs be exterminated by the forces of law and order.

The idea of the monster and its child was promptly borrowed by Toho for the Godzilla series in Son of Godzilla
(1968) wherein Godzilla almost identically gained a son, although that
was played as far more of a cutsie children’s film. A rival Japanese
company stole the basic plot for their monster movie Monster from a Prehistoric Planet/Gappa the Triphibian Monster (1967)

Wednesday, 20 March 2013

Following the success of The Curse of Frankenstein and
Dracula, Hammer Studios decided to turn their attention to the
work of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In keeping
with the tone of their recent films, their choice of The Hound of
the Baskervilles seemed a solid concept. Certainly it was the most famous of Doyle’s many Sherlock Holmes stories, and it was arguably also the one that was best suited to feature length adaptation. On
top of that, it had a macabre component – even if the
inevitable intervention of logic would render its supernatural
elements easily explained by the master
sleuth by the time the film faded to black. The casting of Peter Cushing
as Holmes was a given, even if Hammer executive James Carreras’ assertion that he would be the screen’s first
“sexy” Holmes remains highly questionable. Had the
film been made a few years later, it would not be
inconceivable to picture Holmes as being played by
Christopher Lee (who would indeed later essay the role several
times, beginning with the bizarre West German production Sherlock
Holmes and the Deadly Necklace, 1962, directed by Terence
Fisher), with Cushing supporting as Dr. Watson. In
1958, however, Lee was only beginning to establish a name
for himself, whereas Cushing was more of a proven
quantity.

Sensibly realizing that Lee was too young and too
imposing to play Holmes’ right hand man and confidante,
Dr. John Watson, he was instead given a chance at playing the
romantic lead, a bit of casting which Lee openly relished; he
would therefore become one of the few actors to lend much
in the way of presence and color to the usually disposable
role of Sir Henry Baskerville. To play Dr. Watson, Hammer turned to veteran actor Andre Morell. Morell
was known as a prickly sort, given to speaking his mind,
and he and Lee apparently did not hit it off at all – but neither
ever made much of a commentary on this, leading one to suspect
that perhaps they were simply too similar in disposition. Happily,
no such conflict would come into play with Morell’s
relationship with Cushing – they had already acted together in
the controversial, Nigel Kneale-scripted adaptation of George
Orwell’s 1984 (1954) for the BBC , and following
Hound, they would appear in Cash on Demand (1960), Cone of
Silence (1960) and She (1964). Sadly, however,
this would mark their one and only outing as Holmes and Watson
– while Cushing would go on to play the role many more
times (always on TV, it should be noted), Morell’s association
with the world of Conan Doyle would begin and end on Hound.

The film itself is a problematic one, and this is down more to the screenplay than anything else. While
some Hammer fans have praised scenarist Peter Bryan for
structuring the film so that it would
have some consistency with the “sins of the fathers”
motif that was so common in Hammer horror (and in British horror
in general, if truth be told), it seems to this writer that his
attempts to “Hammerize” the material results in a film that
sits unsteadily between two different styles of
filmmaking. The more sensational elements
feel rather grafted on, while the mystery angle becomes
negligible in the bargain. Viewers unacquainted
with Conan Doyle’s story might hope to have some sense of
surprise when the killer is finally unmasked, but thanks to the
heavy handed approach, there’s never any real doubt as to
“who done it.” As such, the film fails as a
mystery, and while there are token gestures towards the horror
crowd, it’s a little too tame and
restrained to really work on that level, either.

Director Terence Fisher does manage a tremendous set piece
at the beginning, however, as he details the cruelty of Sir
Henry’s infamous ancestor, Sir Hugo (David Oxley). Oxley
tears into his role with ferocious abandon, teerting on the
verge of camp overstatement yet remaining a credible villain. His
presence is sorely missed when the film switches to the present
day, with Ewen Solon’s sour-faced Stapleton proving to be a dull
and rather listless villain. Fisher and
cinematographer Jack Asher work hard to create a sense of
menace on the moors, but the cramped production values
sometimes conspire against their efforts. Hammer’s use of
standing
sets was beginning to show through at this juncture, though
Hammer’s great production designer, Bernard Robinson,
certainly does what he can to disguise the subterfuge. With
James Bernard’s music booming away, it’s clear that this
Hound is meant to be as scary as their previous Dracula and
Frankenstein pictures – but it never quite catches fire.

One would be hard pressed to fault Hammer for their casting of Cushing and Morell, however. Cushing’s
hawk-like visage and thin frame made him ideal casting, though
his average stature is rather unfairly shown up by Fisher on
occasion – when playing scenes opposite very tall men like Lee
and Francis De Wolff (as the sour-pussed Dr. Mortimer), it
would have made better
sense to minimize this, but Fisher elects to have the
other actors towering over Cushing, who has little choice but to
look up at his co-stars when he should be firmly in control of
the scene. Cushing’s devotion to the role was
absolute, and he added bits of business straight from Conan
Doyle, as well as from Sidney Paget’s famed illustrations
from the original Strand Magazine publications of the
stories. He brings intensity to the role, but he does sometimes rely too much on favored mannerisms. There
are moments when his decision to emphasize the
character’s theatricality verges on ham acting, but he manages to
convey the character’s aloof nature and addiction to cocaine
without becoming as over the top as Jeremy Brett would later
be in the rightly celebrated
Granada TV adaptations of the Conan Doyle canon. It is a
performance that compares favorably with Basil Rathbone’s
iconic, possibly definitive, portrayal for Fox and
Universal in the 1930s and 1940s, but he would arguably grow into
the role and play it with greater subtly and effectiveness when
he took over the deer stalker from Douglas Wilmer for the
BBC television series of the 1960s.

Morell’s challenge was arguably greater, in that the
character of Dr. Watson had been reduced to the level of
caricature courtesy of Nigel Bruce’s portrayal opposite
Basil Rathbone in the afore-mentioned series of films. Make
no mistake, Bruce was a charming and engaging performer,
and his blustery portrayal had
tremendous chemistry opposite Rathbone’s aloof and somewhat
acerbic master detective, but it was a portrayal that was
far removed from Conan Doyle. In the stories, Watson is
really the author’s mouthpiece, and it is he who narrates
the action and fills the reader in on the characters and
their motivations. Far from being comedy
relief, Watson is a solid, dependable medical man with a
military background; he may seem “dim” compared to Holmes, but
that’s merely because Holmes represents a kind of intellectual
ideal. Watson is the everyman, and Morell’s interpretation is faithful to this conception. Morell resists the urge to play up the comedy, though he does have a few moments of subtle humor along the way.

It is, in short, an ideal pairing of two fine actors – and
it is this, above anything else, that makes Hammer’s Hound linger
in memory. Cushing’s wound up, energetic
portrayal contrasts nicely with Morell’s more restrained
approach, and the two men clearly have genuine respect and
affection for each other. They make a wonderful team,
though other vehicles – notably Cash on Demand and 1984 –
would play them off as rivals. It’s to be
regretted that Hound was something of a flop at the box
office, as this killed off a potential series of
Cushing/Morell/Hammer Holmes adaptations. Had they had a chance to grow into the roles and establish more audience familiarity, it’s possible that
Cushing and Morell would have eclipsed Rathbone and Bruce in the mind of the public. As
it stands, however, we only have this one, flawed vehicle
to judge them from – and if the film itself has problems,
there’s little doubt that the two actors acquitted themselves
beautifully and were determined to remain as faithful as
possible to Conan Doyle’s original conception. For this reason alone, the Hammer Hound remains an essential entry in the Holmes on film canon.

Monday, 18 March 2013

NEWS: Famous Monsters Magazine Celebrates
Peter Cushing in June! 'This June we celebrate what would have been
Peter Cushing's 100th birthday, and Famous Monsters will look back over
the life and classic works of one of cinema's greatest legends!
Featuring a Peter Cushing cover by Oscar-winner Dave Elsey'.... http://famousmonsters.com/

Unrestored frame from the 'lost' Japanese
print of Hammer Films DRACULA (1958) featuring Peter Cushing as Van
Helsing and Melissa Stribling as Mina. Dir: Terence Fisher. Reels 6 -9
can be seen on the DRACULA blu ray released today.

It’s a lost art, perhaps one of the lesser known signs of the true
gentleman, but Peter Cushing is able to do up a double-breasted suit
while holding a lit cigarette, later holding a nicotine stained figure
up in emphasis. It’s a detail you’d be hard pressed to pick out in any
of the more naturalistic, and arguably more realistic and relatable,
horror movies of the Sixties and Seventies.

It’s easy to focus on the all-new special features, the luscious HD
transfer, and of course the deleted scenes, restoring the crucial
original edit of Hammer‘s
definitive movie some 55 years after it was viciously attacked by the
somewhat prudish censors of Fifties Britain, but the truth is that every
time you watch or rewatch 1958′s Dracula (known in the US as The Horror Of Dracula), you notice something new.

Most of the something new comes from three camps, the incredible performances from Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee,
the decadent cinematography and set design, and the wonderfully tight
and reductive screenplay that trimmed much of Bram Stoker’s gothic
novel. Rather tell a cheap and short story well, than a long and
expensive story badly seemed to be the philosophy, thus eliminating
wolves, bats, ships, asylums, gypsies and a chase across half of Europe
in favour of a carraige dash across an Austro-Hungarian border, complete
with comedy, face-slapping customs official on loan from an Ealing
caper.

Cushing, here at the height of his formidable powers, exudes the
timeless class and steely precision that once ruled British cinema,
while Lee,
at the beginning of his career as a leading man looms and glowers,
punching a black hole in the light and life of each scene with his
flinty glare. Unable to show (or afford) the Count’s otherworldly nature
in all its wall-crawling, transmogrifying majesty, Lee is instead
called upon to project it through presence alone, drifting from almost
elemental inscrutability as to irresistible force as he effortlessly
escapes the clunky machinations of would be vampire slayer John Harker,
and ensnares the women of the Holmwood house in his animalistic thrall.

Though Lee came to resist the role and fear the fluttering bat-wings of
typecasting, his appearance in later efforts becoming all the more
begrudging and embittered, here there’s no denying how definitive a
performance it is for his career, to which the vast majority of his
future roles are indebted

While Sangster‘s
script treats the original novel as a children’s home toy box of
scuffed characters and battered ideas (and the liberties taken are still
jarring for fans of Bram Stoker’s inconsistent masterwork), Lee’s
Dracula is a far more commanding and physical presence than the carrion
Count Orlock, or Bela Lugosi’s sexless methuselah,
and through that more true to Bram Stoker’s conservative paranoia, his
fear of swathy foreigners, alien cultures and sexual predators seeking
to hollow out the moral Camelot of Victorian England.

Modest ambition on a miniscule budget was clearly what Hammer did
best, and using a minimum of sets, mere seconds of locations and barely
double figure supporting cast allows the production team to emphasise
what they do have, decking out baroque splendour for Castle Dracula and
floral cosiness for the Holmwood house, and equally atmospheric streets,
subterranean undertakers and a fog-caked graveyard.

The sad reality of the film’s age leaves the extras largely in the
hands of fans and academics – the former camp featuring Mark Gatiss and
Kim Newman – and what must be one of the last interviews from the
fantastic Jimmy Sangster. What they lack in eyewitnesses, they make up
for with thoroughness, with an incredible piece on Hammer’s long running
battle with the British Board of Film Censors of particular interest
given those recently restored deleted scenes.

Doubtless you ever really thought of Dracula as incomplete.
But after watching the all new restoration – there is a slight dip in
quality food the new scenes, which have been restored from a
fire-damaged, water-logged Japanese print, but not to the extent you’d
have though – it’s inconceivable you’d go back, the original theatrical
climax seeming now strangely abrupt. The option is available though,
should you wish to watch the 1958 theatrical release in its 2007 HD
transfer, but to finally see Hammer’s true vision tells a more complete
story about the sex and the violence that made the studio’s name, the
astonishing physical effects that would need another two decades to
better, and the terrible lover who would not die.

More than just an aspic preservation or white glove restoration of
one of the most important genre films ever as some sort of museum piece,
this is a celebration, that brings Dracula to life over and over again, and without upsetting Christopher Lee in the process…

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